Burmese Migrants in Thailand

13 galleries

Loading ()...

One of the unintended consequences of the democratization of Myanmar is that more NGO resources are flowing into Burma making fewer resources available on the Thai side of the Burmese border even through the need on the Thai side has not diminished.

Tuberculosis is endemic in Myanmar, which has one of the highest infection rates in the world. Multiple Drug Resistant TB is also spreading in the country. The Shoklo-Malaria Research Unit, which provides primarily malaria related health care, also has a TB clinic. The clinic is a sanatorium, where patients are treated in relative isolation, in a remote part of Tak province, about 40 minutes north of Mae Sot. The patients get free treatment and housing at the sanatorium until they are healthy.

The Poi Sang Long Festival at Wat Pa Pao in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is an annual festival that marks the ordination of boys in the temple as novice monks. Hundreds of people attend the festival, which is marked by the boys wearing garish makeup and being carried through the temple grounds on the shoulders of older men while musicians play drums and cymbals.

Mahachai, a fishing port southwest of Bangkok in Samut Sakhon province, is home to hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrants. Most work in the fishing industry, either as crew on the trawlers or in the processing plants around town.
Others work in construction, as factory workers in the electronics factories or as domestic workers in Mahachai and Bangkok, about an hour away.
They live in sprawling housing blocs, crowded apartments and tenements on the edge of town and in tiny rooms across the street from the fish processing plants.
The Burmese live in their own world. They speak their language, they eat Burmese food and listen to Burmese music. When they gather in the Burmese tea shops, they talk about Burmese politics and Aung San Suu Kyi.

There are hundreds of thousands of Burmese in Thailand. Some came to Thailand as political refugees. Others came seeking a better life than what is available in Burma, where unemployment is high and wages are low. Still others were trafficked into Thailand, brought here by unscrupulous criminals who trade in human lives.
As political change comes to Burma, or Myanmar, as the Burmese government calls it, the flow of political refugees into Thailand has slowed but not stopped.
These are pictures I've made in Burmese communities in Thailand over the last several years.

There are hundreds of thousands of Burmese living around Mae Sot, Thailand. Some are refugees, others are immigrants - documented and undocumented. Many of the immigrants fled political turmoil in Burma (Myanmar) but don't qualify for refugee status.
The border at Mae Sot is the Moei River, Burma on the west side of the river, Thailand on the east. But about a mile north of Mae Sot the border cuts across the river into Thailand. A tiny slice of land, maybe 200 meters deep (south to north) and 400 meters long (east to west), about .03 square miles or 20 acres, juts into Thailand.
Technically it's Burma (and is identified as such on some maps) but with no connection to Burma (Myanmar). The people who live here live in a no man's land. They're Burmese with no real connection to Burma (Myanmar). They live as subsistence farmers and sell some of the produce in markets around Mae Sot. Some work (without papers) in Thai factories. Burmese merchants from Mae Sot come out to the community to sell to them and there are a couple of small shops that sell things like dried noodles, biscuits (cookies), beer and soft drinks.
There is a small temple, a hut that's really not much bigger than the other huts in the community. The monks go out every day to collect alms just as they do in Burma and Thailand.

Malaria has long been endemic in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Thailand has all but eliminated malaria within its borders, but neighboring Cambodia and Burma, both wracked by war and devastated economies and infrastructure, still see thousands of deaths.
For most of the latter part of the 20th century, chloroquine was an effective anti-malarial drug and offered a hope that the disease could be controlled. But in the mid 1990s malaria resistant to chloroquine was found in Cambodian patients. It quickly spread to Myanmar (Burma) and then to India and Africa and malaria deaths soared.
Then malarone was developed as an effective treatment. It is expensive but effective.
Now history is repeating itself. The malaria parasite (malaria is parasite spread by the bite of a mosquito) quickly adopted and developed a resistance to malarone. First in Cambodia then in Burma and scientists are concerned that it will spread to India and Africa and that deaths will, once again, soar.
Doctors at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, in Mae Sot, Thailand, are combating malaria in patients in Burma and in Burmese migrants living in Thailand.
Through 2009 SMRU doctors were able to cure over 95% of their malaria patients with a standard course of drugs. Drug resistant malaria was first spotted in 2010 and by 2012 only about 65% of their patients were being cured with the standard treatment.
Now doctors are experimenting with drug “cocktails” and other new treatments but so far none have been as effective as either chloroquine or malarone were and all are more expensive and more prone to side effects.

Tens of thousands of Burmese live in Mae Sot, Thailand and its environs. Some have Thai residency papers and work permits but most do not. They are undocumented immigrants who live openly but always in fear of being caught by Thai police or immigration authorities and being sent back to Burma (Myanmar).

Visakha Puja (Vesak) marks three important events in the Buddha's life: his birth, his attainment of enlightenment and his death. It is celebrated on the full moon of the sixth lunar month, usually in May on the Gregorian calendar. It is celebrated throughout the Buddhist world and is considered one of the holiest Buddhist holidays. Burmese Buddhist in Mae Sot celebrated with a procession through the city that ended with a service followed by a communal meal at Wat Pha Mai, the most important Burmese Buddhist temple in Mae Sot.